America The Ungovernable

In the age old battle between math and politics, math remains undefeated

The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, proposed cutting the IRS’s enforcement budget in exchange for aid to Israel, a sure way to enable high-income tax cheats. Where big earners are concerned, every dollar spent on enforcement returns twelve to the Treasury. It’s simple math, and this transparent gift to the uber-wealthy was always a nonstarter.

Such is the cynicism that has brought us once more to the brink of a government shutdown. As I write this, Barron’s puts the odds at 60%.

After former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum’s hopes went down in flames with Ohio Republicans’ failed attempt to thwart a referendum enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution, he observed, “Pure democracy is no way to run a country.”

For the longest time, I thought our ungovernability due to a small but vocal minority of legislators was a bug in the system, but I now see it is a feature. I thought they were incapable of governing, but I now see they’d rather tear it all down than administer it. Gridlock has become a feature where it used to be a bug.

We are deadlocked on every big issue: gun safety, women’s reproductive rights, promoting senior military officers, and even paying our bills.

It’s weird, because we remain the envy of the world. We have the strongest military by far, we have the strongest economy by far, we have a border crisis not because we are weak, but because we are strong, and everybody wants to come here.

Shamelessness has replaced decency. Too many electeds now make outrageous statements, tour right wing media, and then turn it all into a tidy little fundraising video. Peggy Noonan, of whom I am a grudging fan, wrote: “Here is a truth: anything good for cable news is bad for humanity.”

Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn), has, at long last, received the wrath of his fellow Republican Senators over his refusal to allow senior military promotions. As Joni Ernst (R-Hero), one of ten military veterans in her party’s senate delegation noted, he has never worn the uniform—and no, a War Eagles jersey doesn’t count. By refusing to yield, he has made our remaining senior officers do double duty, landing acting Commandant, Marine Corps General Eric Smith in the hospital after a heart attack. The prescient General Smith warned the dual workload was unsustainable. Tuberville’s response? “These guys all work 18-20 hours a day anyway, I know I did when I was head coach.” Nice, irrelevant comparison. Working out the offensive scheme against Ole Miss is not anything like the life and death decisions our senior military planners are responsible for every single day, where there is no pre-season, no season, no post-season, and certainly no off-season.

We have been warned about a “deep state” and to be wary of the power of the federal government, but it’s the states we should be worried about. Fifteen states, full of religious zeal, raced to ban abortions, putting women, family, friends, and doctors at legal risk, against the wishes of their own majorities. It is the states that have gerrymandered Congress to the degree that there are fewer competitive seats in the House than there are modest nurse’s costumes on Halloween; it’s the states where book banning begins; it’s the states where the honest expression of gender identity faces legal intimidation. Authoritarianism fostered by supermajorities has led to the suppression of civil, human, and common sense rights. The states have become one-party regimes that strangle dissent and debate.

Tennessee is a prime example: they didn’t like what two Black reps had to say, so they threw them out of the legislature. Florida ranks right up there too. Governor DeSantis has a supermajority in the legislature, and has expanded his “war on woke” to companies (Disney), colleges (New College), and of course the public schools where being different is dangerous.

The Guardian’s Moira Donegan wrote, “Republicans have no interest in public service, an ideological hostility to functional government, and an insatiable thirst for attention." And Michael Podhorzer, former political director of AFL-CIO wrote: “From 2010 through 2022, a historically high number of House Republicans were defeated in primaries, with the vast majority of successful challenges happening in the most evangelical districts.”

From 1945 until 1994, Congress was controlled by Democrats who worked closely with  Republicans. It is no coincidence that that was the high watermark for the American Century. We won World War II, saved the world from Nazis and Fascists, came home and created a baby boom, and set off the biggest economic surge in the history of the world.

Maybe the country is governable, just not by electeds who are more interested culture wars than policy.

©2023 Jon Sinton